


I could be that girl

by mambo



Category: Wicked - All Media Types, Wicked - Schwartz/Holzman
Genre: Best Friends, F/F, Gay Awakening, Masturbation, One-Sided Attraction, Self-Discovery, This Is WEIRD and HORNY and I'm SORRY
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-11 17:36:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20157457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mambo/pseuds/mambo
Summary: Despite some people’s beliefs that Galinda Upland came to Shiz with absolutely no useful knowledge, Galinda knows three things for sure:1. If one is to own very many shoes, one must have a good storage system for their very many shoes, lest one trip over their very many shoes;2. A curling wand and a magical wand are two very different things and should not be mistaken for one another; and,3. The entire point of a collegiate education is not only to learn at least three other pieces of useful knowledge, but to find oneself a suitable match, selected from their compatriots.





	I could be that girl

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: My next door neighbor and I used to spend hours and hours singing along to the Wicked soundtrack and switching off who would be Glinda and who would be Elphaba and now we're both gay, so.

Despite some people’s beliefs that Galinda Upland came to Shiz with absolutely no useful knowledge, Galinda knows three things for sure:

  1. If one is to own very many shoes, one must have a good storage system for their very many shoes, lest one trip over their very many shoes;
  2. A curling wand and a magical wand are two very different things and should not be mistaken for one another; and,
  3. The entire point of a collegiate education is not only to learn at least three other pieces of useful knowledge, but to find oneself a suitable match, selected from their compatriots.

Though, one piece of knowledge that Galinda Upland did not bring with her to Shiz, but rather, acquired along the way, was that not all of her compatriots would be… compatible. Of course, she had met the occasional oddball here and there, maybe made a joke or two at their expense. It was to be expected, frankly, and was freely encouraged by her parents and peers.

But Galinda had, perhaps, falsely expected that her peers at Shiz would be a little more of… the peerage.

“Technically, I am the daughter of the Governor of Munchkinland,” Elphaba tells her one night after Galinda offhandedly makes some remark to that effect, she doesn’t remember the particulars. “Though he’d like to forget it,” she mutters after. The muttering is a pretty unseemly habit, if you ask Galinda. No one asked Galinda, but she says so anyway.

And isn’t that something, the green girl reminding Galinda that she has more of a title than she does. Even if she’ll never actually be the Governor, she’s next in line of succession, and wouldn’t that start a civil war, if she were to try to take power.

The Munchkin War has a ring to it, though. Very dramatic.

But all of this means that getting a title becomes, suddenly, very important to Galinda Upland.

Except, the thing is.

The thing is.

Boys keep asking her out. Every day, they come to her and say, “Miss Galinda, I love you” and “Miss Galinda, I ache for you” and “Miss Galinda, I’d die for you”, which is all very flattering but deeply… uninteresting. Besides, Galinda can see Elphaba off to the corner snickering when it happens and isn’t that a trick, making Galinda think of her when she should be thinking of her future mate and what she wants in them.

And honestly trying to keep her from finding her match, like when Fiyero Tigelaar finally, finally gets to campus, the first thing Elphaba does is accost the man. Now, before she saw Elphaba talk to him, Galinda hadn’t thought all that much about Fiyero but now that she sees him arguing with Elphaba, it’s clear:

He’s the one for her.

He is the handsomest, most assuredly, and his charismatic charm brings every eye in the room to him. Even Elphaba isn’t immune from his charming laugh; Galinda sees her at the corner of the room, lips curling up in the tiniest of smiles as she watches him regale them all with tales of his misadventures, and isn’t that something, Elphaba’s littlest smile, a magic spell in of itself.

And she’s allowed now, since they’re friends, to watch her a little more closely. It’s research, it’s downright scientific, because Galinda is going to make her a suitable partner.

For someone.

Not herself, of course. And most definitely not for Fiyero, who is _hers_.

But for someone. Maybe some very lucky Munchkin boy with a very serious case of color blindness.

Still, it’s nice to not have to constantly avert her eyes when they’re in their room together. It allows Galinda the time to inspect, to watch the way that Elphaba releases her cascading hair from her tragic braid, to see the way it falls down onto her back as she sheds her simple frock for the night. There’s a lean curve to Elphaba’s body and sometimes, if you look at her in the right light when she’s changing, the contrast between her black hair as it falls against her naked green back is, well, it’s striking.

Sometimes, in fact, it makes Galinda’s throat go dry.

She’s not entirely sure what that’s about, or the way that all of the pent up emotion she’s felt about Elphaba seems to bubble over some nights when she’s alone in their room, while Elphaba is out with Nessarose or studying or whatever it is that she spends her time outside of their close quarters doing. It’s not loathing anymore but sometimes the feelings are just as intense, all encompassing. She tells herself to think of Fiyero – who she will be marrying – or even any of the other boys that profess their love to her, and she… doesn’t.

It’s a few nights later that Elphaba is out again, which is annoying because Galinda, well. She wanted to see her, to spend time with her, to make her do that thing where she smiles, she really truly smiles and it’s like a poppy bud opening.

But she’s gone. Of course.

But for whatever reason, despite the fact that she doesn’t even wear the darned thing anymore, she leaves behind that homely little beanie she always insisted on wearing when she first came to Shiz. Galinda picks it up off of Elphaba’s impeccably made bed with its scratchy sheets and brings it to her nose. It smells like dirty hair and cheap shampoo; it smells like _Elphaba_. It’s like perfume sent straight from the Emerald City in a gleaming glass bottle.

Without thinking too hard about what she’s doing – which isn’t much of a problem; she’s never thought too hard about anything – she brings the hat with her into bed. Her head is a bit smaller than Elphaba’s — though her gentle curls are big — but she doesn’t put it on her head. Rather, she drops it onto her face just so she can shut her eyes and smell, even though the whole thing is kind of gross.

And continuing to not think, she hikes up her skirt and shimmies her underwear down to her knees. Using her manicured finger, she doesn’t think about Elphaba, she doesn’t think of the curve of her spine, the way she sits so focused in class, how much she cares about everything, and how bad the stupid hat smells. But the thing that sends her is the thought of her own pale pink lips against green skin. Pink and green suit each other, you know.

Maybe this was the fourth piece of useful knowledge that Galinda had acquired before coming to Shiz.

She’s just about to drop Elphaba’s hat back onto the bed when the door opens. “What are you doing?” Elphaba asks, looking at Galinda – slightly more disheveled than usually allowed – hunched over her bed with her hat.

Galinda is good on her feet, though. An excellent liar. “I wanted to try on your hat,” she says as she drops the hat. It almost sounds true.

“You… what?” Elphaba asks, looking skeptically between Galinda’s hovering hand and the hat, now laying limp on the bed.

“The hat.”

“Yes, I know about the hat.”

“I wanted to—“

Elphaba rolls her eyes as she interrupts. “Well, why would you want to try on my hat? I’ve heard you say more than once that that hat—“ Which she points to, her finger long and her nail short. “—is the world’s ugliest hat.”

“That’s not true!” Galinda says.

“No I heard—“

“That it’s the world’s ugliest hat.” Elphaba raises an eyebrow. “Your black one is a little uglier.”

It takes Elphaba a second, but then she laughs, that ugly, loud cackle that makes Galinda want to run up to her and take her in her arms and maybe mouth at her neck, just a little. But that’s something normal to think when you see your best friend laugh, right?

“Here,” Elphaba says, leaning down and grabbing the hat. She opens it up and before Galinda can say _no way my curls_, she stretches it over Galinda’s head.

“My curls,” Galinda says in horror as she rushes to the mirror to see the damage.

It’s terrible. A horror show. The navy hat does not match the color of her skin or her hair and it’s bunched everything down. She looks like an upside down flower with droopy, curly petals.

Elphaba, however, seems to be having the time of her life. It shouldn’t make it better but somehow, it does.

“Laugh it up but I wasn’t the one who wore this every day!” Galinda says, stomping her foot but barely concealing her own smile. Elphaba looms over her shoulder, grabbing the hat and forcing it down even lower on Galinda’s head. “Stop it!!” Galinda says, completely unable to keep herself from giggling now.

“Alright, alright,” Elphaba says, holding her hands up and taking a step back. Galinda misses her already.

“Where were you, anyway?” Galinda asks, not bothering to take off the hat.

Elphaba doesn’t meet her eye. “Oh, Fiyero had a question about tonight’s assignment, so we were going over it.”

“Fiyero asked you for help with his… homework?” Galinda asks but means something else.

Elphaba shrugs. “Not like he could go to you,” she says, a bit pointedly.

Running to Elphaba and knocking the two of them over onto Galinda’s bed was probably an overreaction to the, frankly true, statement, but she does it anyway.

And when they’re tangled up together in a pile of limbs, Galinda takes Elphaba’s hand in hers. “Elphy?” she asks.

“Yeah?”

Galinda swallows hard. “Isn’t it strange how you learn so many new things at university?”

Elphaba snorts. “It’s what you’re supposed to do.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah,” she says.

And somehow, Galinda doesn’t think Elphaba is talking about the same thing she is. But that’s okay. Sometimes it’s nice to know something that even the smartest person you know doesn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> You can follow me on Tumblr at [whtaft](whtaft.tumblr.com)!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] I could be that girl](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24152623) by [twtd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/twtd/pseuds/twtd)


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